Ages and worlds
Every player sees cases picked for their age.
When a player signs up, we ask for the month and year they were born, never the full date. The game uses it to show the right worlds and hide cases that aren't a fit yet.
| World | Made for | Opens from | What the cases are like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maple Street School | 8–10 | Age 8 | A missing class hamster, a science fair mix-up, a lost treasure map. |
| Junior Casebook | 8–10 | Age 8 | Short harbor-town mysteries with one clue to find. |
| Camp Pinecrest | 11–13 | Age 10 | A vanished flag, a canoe gone adrift, a "ghost" in the pines. |
| Fantasy Kingdom | 11 and up | Age 10 | A stolen royal seal, a vanished enchanted lute, a shattered sunstone. |
| Classic Noir | 14 and up | Age 10 | Missing bakery cash, a forged painting, a vanished strongbox. Thefts, never violence. |
| Victorian Manor | 14 and up | Age 12 | Classic country-house mysteries: a lady taken ill by bitter tea (she recovers), a missing will after an old man dies peacefully, a stolen brooch. |
| Westbrook High | 14–17 | Age 13 | A sabotaged band, a fake viral post, a vanished trophy. |
That works out to 6 cases at ages 8–9, 15 at age 10, 18 at age 12 and all 21 from 13. Plus a new case every night at 7 pm: a junior case for under-12s and a detective case for everyone else.
Accounts and permission
Your child plays under a nickname. You hold the keys.
- Kids pick a fun nickname like "Brave Owl". We never ask a child for their real name, email, photo or address.
- Players under 13 (or the age set by local law where you live) need a parent to set things up. The parent adds their email and a 4-digit parent PIN.
- Parent settings sit behind the PIN: allow or block playing with friends, limit your child to younger cases, and add or remove profiles. A child can't switch from their profile to a grown-up one without it.
- Parent emails are encrypted before they are stored. The PIN itself is never stored.
- At launch, parent permission will be verified through an established kids' consent service.
Playing safely
What's in the game, and what isn't.
No ads, no purchases
The game is free. There's nothing to buy and no ads, ever.
Friends only, no chat
Co-op and race games are joined with a private table code shared by the host. Players see nicknames and a shared notebook. There is no text or voice chat.
Mysteries, not violence
Cases are about missing things, pranks and secrets. Nothing graphic and no jump scares. The darkest story, in Victorian Manor (12+), involves a poisoning the victim recovers from.
Calm by default
Music starts off for players under 12. The game follows your device's "reduce motion" setting.
Short sessions
A case takes about 5 to 15 minutes, and progress saves automatically, so it's easy to stop.
Four languages
The game's buttons and menus are in English, Spanish, French and Hindi. Case stories are in English for now.
Learning
See the skills, not just the score.
After every case, the game shows which thinking skills your child used: observation, reading closely, logical reasoning, checking stories against evidence, timelines and learning from mistakes. Wrong guesses explain why they were wrong, so a mistake becomes a lesson instead of a dead end.
Questions
Parents ask us
Is it really free?
Yes. No ads, no purchases and no subscriptions. We'll tell you clearly before that ever changes.
Can my child talk to strangers?
No. There's no chat of any kind. Group play only works with a private table code that the host shares, and players appear by nickname only.
What information do you keep about my child?
A nickname, the month and year of birth (to pick age-right cases), region and language settings, and game progress such as solved cases and points. For players under 13, the parent's email is stored encrypted. We don't collect a child's name, email, photos, location or contacts.
Can my child use it at school?
Yes. It runs in any modern browser, on Chromebooks, tablets and computers, with nothing to install. Teachers can join the waitlist with "My class" and we'll be in touch about classroom use.
How do I delete my child's profile?
Open the profile menu, choose Parent settings, enter your PIN and remove the profile. You can also email hello@hushlantern.com and we'll delete it for you.
Want to know when it opens?
Join the waitlist and we'll email you once at launch.